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Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

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Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#401

Post by moogly »

bilekas wrote: post #146
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

> The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days

I think you mean unbelievably expensive and takes an eternity to build outside of China and Korea.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#402

Post by palata »

dolia wrote: post #321
palata wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannot be worse than wasting many billions in F35s, can it?

Are you opposed to F35s only or to army spendings in general?

Not opposed to defence in principle. But Switzerland's army has proven, repeatedly these last few years, that they are incompetent. From understanding a multi-billions contract before signing it to selecting relevant technology (drones that fundamentally cannot fly in a civilian airspace, etc).

Not only incompetent: the way the F35 was handled really looks like corruption from the outside. And for some reason the head of the defence ministry AND the head of the army left not so long after that...

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#403

Post by JumpCrisscross »

philipkglass wrote: post #12
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the world goes to shit again, having a baseline for building an Alpine nuclear deterrent isn't the worst thing to have on soil.

Switzerland has several operating nuclear reactors: https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.... Switzerland also studied nuclear weapons production until 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_and_weapons_of_mas... If the Swiss thought it was in the national interest to exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and crash-develop a nuclear deterrent, I think that they could achieve nuclear…

Having people skilled in running versus building.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#404

Post by MoonWalk »

tfourb wrote: post #308
rayiner wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. They’re the third biggest villains of climate change, after consumers and oil companies. If the whole developed world had nuclearized the way France did, our discussions about climate change would be entirely different. We would have decades more runway to avoid 2C+ scenarios. We would have already electrified vast swaths of the econom…

> It’s only expensive and brittle because environmentalists have choked it to death. The only reason why "environmentalists" were able to influence the debate around nuclear is because nuclear is uneconomical and studded with actual, real problems. Look at fossil fuels. Environmentally and in terms of public health it is way worse than nuclear (at least a current respective buildout levels). And environmentalists hav…

Nobody said it would be as cheap as solar. But "renewables" can't fulfill ALL power needs ALL the time.

When you actually need to generate electricity rather than gather it, what's better than nuclear?

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#405

Post by moffkalast »

doodledoodahs wrote: post #366
Czarcasm wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2015-2016 I did some mechanical engineering work at BWXT, designing nuclear waste containers for the Bruce Power CANDU reactor refurbishment program. I learned that the spent fuel storage is pretty trivial for a few reasons: 1. The amount of fuel waste produced by a reactor is volumetrically tiny. So it's not too expensive to just have a relatively small guarded yard of sealed storage casks next to the reactor, wh…

What about the waste inherent in decommissioning plants?

Why would you decommission them after all that investment instead of re-fitting? What would the ecological consequences would be if you demolished the Hoover Dam? Some things just have to be built to last as long as they physically can.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#406

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #394
bilekas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

> Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though France got there first. They built out such a massive infrastructure of Nuclear that they are a net provider of energy in Europe. They are also the only country to date that has officially pushed back on old safety models like LNT.

[deleted]

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#407

Post by otterley »

moogly wrote: post #401
bilekas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland has an amazing opportunity to be the standard setter in the EU with nuclear though. The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days. It a real shame to leave it all on the table because of poorly designed and managed disasters.

> The technology is so unbelievably safe and efficient these days I think you mean unbelievably expensive and takes an eternity to build outside of China and Korea.

These are not opposites. Both can be true.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#408

Post by firefax »

rsync wrote: post #122
firefax wrote: post #60

One of the little gems the Russians pulled off in the twenty aughts when they were flooding nonprofits in the USA with dirty money was hijacking the green movement to promote fracking. (Because surely ANYTHING is better than those dastardly electrons or whatever the fuck radiation is made of) Switzerland, unlike the USA, seems capable of safely operating these plants, and with advances in breeder technology new plant…

“Switzerland, unlike the USA, seems capable of safely operating these plants …” I would have said that about the Japanese as well…

japan actually seems averse to any kind of change in a way they aren't. do swiss atms close at a certain time of day? do many takeout places want you to fax orders? there's a lot of things that go beyond "conservative" in japan in the risk averse sense into just being stuck in the 80s.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#409

Post by zeafoamrun »

awesome_dude wrote: post #385
jokteur wrote: post #32

This still has to pass with the people in a referendum. The discourse on nuclear is still quite chaotic in politics in Switzerland. All left leaning parties and greens parties are strongly against nuclear. I am not expecting informed and civil discussions about this topic. Switzerland has a summer/winter energy problem. We have lots of potential of producing energy in the spring and summer (when our dams are full fro…

1. Ukraine nuclear power plants are a massive liability - they make for easy targets for the Russians to obliterate the country - is that what you want for Switzerland? 2. The waste - nobody wants it - it's a hazard for tens of thousands of years - what's the plan for managing it? Yes energy generation (and independence) is important, no nuclear ain't it.

No country is going to bomb Switzerland because they all have money stashed here.

Re: Swiss parliament lifts ban on new nuclear power plants

#410

Post by otterley »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #377
SXX wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest problem is that people not aware of how many closed down or not built nuclear power plants been replaced with coal power plants. And coal kills more people in a week than all nuclear incidents killed in all history of humanity. Not even mention that coal power plants release more radioactive materials too.

The reason people are not aware of it is because it's utter tripe. In the US, coal generation has been falling for twenty years because it's more expensive than wind and solar. Same reason nuclear is being phased out - grid operators can get power cheaper via wind, solar, import/export, and battery storage.

That may be true for the USA, but there's the rest of the world to consider. China and India were both increasing their coal generation year after year until, well, just this past year: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...
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